Proposed audit reforms in Europe, which include mandatory firm rotation and a ban on advisory services provided to audit clients, have been met with, shall we say, resistance:
The Big Four are campaigning hard to stop many of the core changes from being approved by the European Parliament and EU states. Smaller auditors are urging lawmakers to stand their ground as the prospect of a bigger market share looms. "The lobbying has been fierce and has been excessive in our view," Arvind Wadhera, a senior European Commission official, told a hearing on the reform in parliament. It was "worse" than what he witnessed with banks, a sector seen as a benchmark for bending the ear of lawmakers. He invited the auditors to "write rather than trying to dismiss all the proposals made by the commission at all sorts of fora."
Jonathan Weil over at Bloomberg has a new column up today and he is less enthusiastic about the Supreme Court decision in FEF v. PCAOB than say,